Empires and Barbarians : The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe

Empires and Barbarians presents a fresh, provocative look at how a recognizable Europe came into being in the first millennium AD. With sharp analytic insight, Peter Heather explores the dynamics of migration and social and economic interaction that changed two vastly different worlds--the undeveloped barbarian world and the sophisticated Roman Empire--into remarkably similar societies and states.

The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders

In AD 476, the last of Rome's emperors, known as "Augustulus", was deposed by a barbarian general, the son of one of Attila the Hun's henchmen. With the imperial vestments dispatched to Constantinople, the curtain fell on the Roman empire in Western Europe, its territories divided among successor kingdoms constructed around barbarian military manpower. But, if the Roman Empire was dead, Romans across much of the old empire still lived, holding on to their lands, their values, and their institutions.

The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians

The death of the Roman Empire is one of the perennial mysteries of world history. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Peter Heather proposes a stunning new solution: Centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors Rome called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling an Empire that had dominated their lives for so long. A leading authority on the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians, Heather relates the extraordinary story of how Europe's barbarians, transformed by centuries of contact with Rome on every possible level, eventually pulled the empire apart.

The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact With Stalin, 1939-1941

History remembers the Soviets and the Nazis as bitter enemies and ideological rivals - the two opposing totalitarian regimes of World War II whose conflict would be the defining and deciding clash of the war. Yet for nearly a third of the conflict's entire timespan, Hitler and Stalin stood side by side as partners.

Barbarians Within the Gates of Rome: A Study of Roman Military Policy and the Barbarians, Ca. 375-425 A.D.

A major work on Roman policy toward the barbarians during one of the most exciting and challenging periods in the history of the Roman Empire, when barbarian soldiers became part of the forces defending the Roman frontier and gradually its rulers. By the close of these five decades, the Western Empire - hence Western Civilization - had changed forever.

Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain: The Middle Ages Series

Drawing from both Christian and Islamic sources, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain demonstrates that the clash of arms between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian peninsula that began in the early eighth century was transformed into a crusade by the papacy during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Successive popes accorded to Christian warriors willing to participate in the peninsular wars against Islam the same crusading benefits offered to those going to the Holy Land.

How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower

In AD 200, the Roman Empire seemed unassailable, its vast territory accounting for most of the known world. By the end of the fifth century, Roman rule had vanished in Western Europe and much of northern Africa, and only a shrunken Eastern Empire remained. This was a period of remarkable personalities, from the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius to emperors like Diocletian, who portrayed themselves as tough, even brutal, soldiers.

A Brief History of Roman Britain: Brief Histories

In 55 B.C. Julius Caesar came, saw, conquered and then left. It was not until A.D. 43 that the Emperor Claudius crossed the channel and made Britain the western outpost of the Roman Empire that would span from the Scottish border to Persia. For the next 400 years the island would be transformed. Within that period would see the rise of Londinium, almost immediately burnt to the ground in A.D. 60 by Boudicca; Hadrian's Wall, which was constructed in A.D. 112 to keep the northern tribes at bay, as well as the birth of the Emperor Constantine in third century York.

The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

An upstart French duke who sets out to conquer the most powerful and unified kingdom in Christendom. An invasion force on a scale not seen since the days of the Romans. One of the bloodiest and most decisive battles ever fought.

Medieval Christianity: A New History

For many, the medieval world seems dark and foreign - a miraculous, brutal, and irrational time of superstition and strange relics. The pursuit of heretics, the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the domination of the "Holy Land" come to mind.

A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain

Edward I is familiar to millions as "Longshanks", conqueror of Scotland and nemesis of Sir William Wallace (in Braveheart). Yet this story forms only the final chapter of the king's action-packed life. Earlier, Edward had defeated and killed the famous Simon de Montfort, traveled to the Holy Land, and conquered Wales. He raised the greatest armies of the Middle Ages and summoned the largest parliaments. Notoriously, he expelled all the Jews from his kingdom.

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict.

Rome Enters the Greek East

This volume examines the period from Rome’s earliest involvement in the eastern Mediterranean to the creation of the first stage of Roman dominance over all the Greek states from the Adriatic Sea to Syria by the 180s BC. Applying modern political theory to ancient Mediterranean history, it takes a Realist approach to its analysis of the development of Roman involvement in the Greek Mediterranean and employs unipolarity theory to examine the earliest era of Roman geopolitical dominance over the Greek states.

The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean

Ranging from prehistory to the 21st century, The Great Sea is above all the history of human interaction across a region that has brought together many of the great civilizations of antiquity as well as the rival empires of medieval and modern times.

In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire

The evolution of the Arab empire is one of the supreme narratives of ancient history, a story dazzlingly rich in drama, character, and achievement. In this exciting and sweeping history - the third in his trilogy of books on the ancient world - Tom Holland describes how the Arabs emerged to carve out a stupefyingly vast dominion in a matter of decades, overcoming seemingly insuperable odds to create an imperial civilization.

The Third Horseman: Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century

In May 1315 it started to rain. It didn't stop anywhere in north Europe until August. Next came the four coldest winters in a millennium. Two separate animal epidemics killed nearly 80 percent of northern Europe's livestock. Wars between Scotland and England, France and Flanders, and two rival claimants to the Holy Roman Empire destroyed all remaining farmland. After seven years, the combination of lost harvests, warfare, and pestilence would claim six million lives - one eighth of Europe's total population.

The War of the Three Gods: Romans, Persians, and the Rise of Islam

The War of the Three Gods is a military history of the Near and Middle East in the seventh century - with its chief focus on the reign of the Eastern Roman Emperor Heraclius (AD 610-641) - a pivotal and dramatic time in world history. The Eastern Roman Empire was brought to the very brink of extinction by the Sassanid Persians before Heraclius managed to inflict a crushing defeat on the Sassanids with a desperate, final gambit.

Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution

England's turbulent seventeenth century is vividly laid out before us, but so too is the cultural and social life of the period, notable for its extraordinarily rich literature, including Shakespeare's late masterpieces, Jacobean tragedy, the poetry of John Donne and Milton, and Thomas Hobbes's great philosophical treatise, Leviathan. Rebellion also gives us a very real sense of the lives of ordinary English men and women, lived out against a backdrop of constant disruption and uncertainty.

When Britain Saved the West: The Story of 1940

From the comfortable distance of seven decades, it is quite easy to view the victory of the Allies over Hitler's Germany as inevitable. But in 1940 Great Britain's defeat loomed perilously close, and no other nation stepped up to confront the Nazi threat. In this cogently argued book, Robin Prior delves into the documents of the time - war diaries, combat reports, Home Security's daily files, and much more - to uncover how Britain endured a year of menacing crises.

Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization

An epic history of a doomed civilization and a lost empire. The devastating struggle to the death between the Carthaginians and the Romans was one of the defining dramas of the ancient world. In an epic series of land and sea battles, both sides came close to victory before the Carthaginians finally succumbed and their capital city, history, and culture were almost utterly erased.

In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire

In just over a hundred years - from the death of Muhammad in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 - the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. Their armies threatened states as far flung as the Franks in Western Europe and the Tang Empire in China. The conquered territory was larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion, and it was claimed for the Arabs in roughly half the time.

The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades

In The Race for Paradise, Paul M. Cobb offers a new history of the confrontations between Muslims and Franks we now call the "Crusades", one that emphasizes the diversity of Muslim experiences of the European holy war. There is more to the story than Jerusalem, the Templars, Saladin, and the Assassins. Cobb considers the Arab perspective on all shores of the Muslim Mediterranean, from Spain to Syria.

A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons: Brief Histories

Starting AD 400 (around the time of their invasion of England) and running through to the 1100s (the 'Aftermath'), historian Geoffrey Hindley shows the Anglo-Saxons as formative in the history not only of England but also of Europe. The society inspired by the warrior world of the Old English poem Beowulf saw England become the world's first nation state and Europe's first country to conduct affairs in its own language, and Bede and Boniface of Wessex establish the dating convention we still use today.

The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians

In the last half of the fourth century, the Roman Empire began to feel the stress of renewed pressure on its borders as Germanic and Asian tribes moved westward. As these tribes settled, they began to form alliances and to convert to Christianity. But when these very capable tribesmen began to enlist in the Roman military, the empire began to fall under the control of mercenary soldiers.

Egypt, Greece, and Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean

Long sources of mystery, imagination, and inspiration, the myths and history of the ancient Mediterranean have given rise to artistic, religious, cultural, and intellectual traditions that span the centuries. In this unique and comprehensive introduction to the region's three major civilizations, Egypt, Greece, and Rome draws a fascinating picture of the deep links between the cultures across the Mediterranean and explores the ways in which these civilizations continue to be influential to this day.

Publisher's Summary

Empires and Barbarians presents a fresh, provocative look at how a recognizable Europe came into being in the first millennium AD. With sharp analytic insight, Peter Heather explores the dynamics of migration and social and economic interaction that changed two vastly different worlds - the undeveloped barbarian world and the sophisticated Roman Empire - into remarkably similar societies and states.

The book's vivid narrative begins at the time of Christ, when the Mediterranean circle, newly united under the Romans, hosted a politically sophisticated, economically advanced, and culturally developed civilization - one with philosophy, banking, professional armies, literature, stunning architecture, even garbage collection. The rest of Europe, meanwhile, was home to subsistence farmers living in small groups, dominated largely by Germanic speakers. Although having some iron tools and weapons, these mostly illiterate peoples worked mainly in wood and never built in stone. The farther east one went, the simpler it became: fewer iron tools and ever less productive economies. And yet 10 centuries later, from the Atlantic to the Urals, the European world had turned. Slavic speakers had largely superseded Germanic speakers in central and Eastern Europe, literacy was growing, Christianity had spread, and most fundamentally, Mediterranean supremacy was broken.

Bringing the whole of first millennium European history together, and challenging current arguments that migration played but a tiny role in this unfolding narrative, Empires and Barbarians views the destruction of the ancient world order in light of modern migration and globalization patterns.

What did you like best about Empires and Barbarians ? What did you like least?

I am fascinated by the topic of the millennium which started during the Roman Empire and after its collapse, seemed to be a confused mess of Huns, Goths and Vandals. This author sheds light on what has been called the Dark Ages and brings to life the people and the ebb and flow of the societies which lived in Europe during the period. There is some repetition - my attention span is not so short that I needed to be reminded of the parallels with some 20th century events, which seemed to me to happen fairly frequently. However the attention to detail and scholarship of the author is amazing.

The performance needed a really good editor and some instruction for the narrator, however. I doubt if too many English peasants set sail for America in the 7th(sic) century. The first syllable in Pyrenees rhymes with fir, not fire, at least every time I have heard it said. I presume the word the author meant was 'denuded' not 'denunded' which I have not found in any dictionary. If such frequent errors could be corrected, it would certainly improve the experience, from which they currently detract. I am not a particularly pedantic or critical listener but the errors grate.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Empires and Barbarians ?

The sections which mention areas of northern France (Loire etc) as I am about to visit the area and will look at it this time with an enhanced awareness of its history and see the chateaux and their surroundings in the context of a much longer time span than previously. This book is helping me fill in the gaps in my knowledge of european society between Roman times and approximately 1000AD.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

See above

Was Empires and Barbarians worth the listening time?

Yes

Any additional comments?

Please let me know when the errors have been corrected - I think the author is owed this attention.

It is terribly sad when a good book is ruined due to insufficient preparations on the part of the reader and/or audiobook producer. Peter Heather's "Empires and Barbarians" is positively brimming with names of people, places, cultures etc. most of which are not familiar to the average listener. The recording would have been so much better if the reader and producer had spent a couple of hours figuring out how to pronounce things. Asking the author, e.g., might have been a good idea. As it stands, the recording is a complete failure. Some of the worst cases are almost unidentifiable without access to the printed text.

This is a treatise, or maybe it was a PhD dissertation, whatever it was it was ever so learned and made my eyes rotate with pain into the back of my head. Most of that pain was at the murderous narration by Sean Schemmel - if you are going to have a learned text narrated at least get some one who can read long words and gets geographical names correct. The other pain was the names of the tribes and leaders listed ad nauseam and the fact that a pertinent point was repeated several times just so that in the stream of learned stuff you didn't miss the salient point.

I persisted and listened to all 3 volumes as I am interested in the topic but I shall not need to delve any further into the migration of the germanic hords in the first millenium AD any more - I have heard the definitive history now and can relax in the knowledge that my history of the fall of the roman empire is complete.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

The book itself is great, an important and likely enduring work of scholarship. The reading, unfortunately is terrible. I feel for the narrator because many of the names of both people and places are quite difficult to pronounce correctly. Unfortunately though the narrator consistently mispronounces well-known names such as "Constantius", "Dacia", "Nicomedia" and even "Nicea." Both he and the producers of this book should have done their homework before-hand. I stuck through the audiobook, but the reading often left me either shaking my head or grinding my teeth. Sorry to be so critical but it is what it is.

This book has great detail about the peopling of Europe in the first millennium. I'd listen to it again if it had a different narrator. He often puts the accent on the wrong words, interrupting your train of thought. But worse, his mispronunciations--too many to list. But saying "sign" for "Seine"? That's too much.

Enjoyed the book, and the humor. There is a lot of content there, and I'd go back again and listen, now that I know where it's going

What did you like best about this story?

The tour of Europe -- taking each section in turn

How could the performance have been better?

The narrator was horrible. Peter Heather is a very witty man, and I don't think the narrator got most of his jokes. Mr. Heather deserves a narrator erudite enough to know when he is being funny! There is a lot of warmth and humanity in this book, too, which is also obscured by the delivery.

This book covers roughly the first millennium of European History. The author is a scholar of European History and it is obvious that his primary audience is fellow scholars to discuss and promote various theories concerning the migration of various peoples and cultures through that time period. If you are not a part of this audience, it can be a very difficult book to follow in an audio format.

What was most disappointing about Peter Heather’s story?

In doing an audio book that depends so much on the changing political geography of Europe over the first millennium, the very least the author could have done is made available a PDF detailing the changing map of Europe over that time and the movements of the various ethnic groups that are central the narrative of this book. Further, an appendix detailing the various ethnic groups who are the central characters of this book would be extremely helpful. Rick Atkinson has a website for his three book series on WWII that is extremely helpful in understanding the troop movements and battles of that period. The author of this book would do well to try to develop a similar site for this book.

How could the performance have been better?

Anyone trying to read this book to those who do not already have a good background in this subject area would have a difficult time keeping their attention. If you don't have a good background in European geography, it is very difficult to follow and keep track of the various ethnic groups that the author describes as they make their way across Europe.

Any additional comments?

If you do purchase this book, I strongly advise that do a search on You Tube for Barbarians. There are numerous free videos that do a wonderful job of putting some flesh and warmth into this topic.

Peter Heather's work provides a detailed history of people and factors which drove the relationship between Rome and its neighbors. His review of the evidence for and against the notion of mass migration was new information for me.

Unfortunately, the audio version requires the listener to to endure a reading totally without nuance or comprehension of the text itself.

The mispronunciation of proper names, geographic locations, and common words makes me wonder where the producer/editor was for this reading.

For example, before reading further, pronounce the name of the dead language spoken in Italy during late antiquity. Many people took the class in high school.

Right, the answer is LATIN. Last syllable rhymes with "sin"

It took me a while to fully understand what the reader was talking about as he kept referring to the "LATINE West". Last syllable pronounced to rhyme with "fine"

The dry academic treatise spends altogether too much time on details such as the evolution of kingship in Germania, and far too little on the drama of the period. It is further marred by a halting, monotone narration and gratuitous political point scoring. I gave up after Chapter 4. If you're interested in this topic try Bury's "Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians".

Sadly the narration lets the audiobook down. I really wanted to listen to it as it is a subject I am interested in and seemed to be an interesting take on it but it became unbearable.

What didn’t you like about Sean Schemmel’s performance?

Sean Schemmel didn't appear to understand much of the text he was reading or at least didn't go back for another take when he botched lines. As a result sentences run into each other or are cut off in the wrong place making it hard to discern the meaning. Worse still the whole thing is read with little or no variation of emphasis, in a flat monotone which meant that I would realise I had stopped listening and missed whole chunks.

Was Empires and Barbarians worth the listening time?

The book probably was but the narration ruined it.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Jim

London

7/25/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"A Hun's eye view of the fall of the Roman Empire"

This started off slowly with what felt like quite a dry explanation of why Heather wrote a book about the "Barbarian" migrations that occured from the fall of the Roman empire and into the dark ages. But it built up momentum to become a completely fascinating account of what all this tribes were up to as they moved across Eurasia; the extent to which they would have recognized the tribal labels we're taught to apply to them and the legacy they have left us in terms of modern European politics. The author avoids this becoming dull by offering an amazing range of everyday details about the lives our nomadic ancestors lived and the drive they had to travel enormous distances in search of peace & plenty or conquest & pillage; sometimes both.

The fifth star is for the narrator who does a tough job well. I started off thinking that he could maybe of pronounced some French names differently but it quickly became clear that he was required to get his tongue around Slavic names; German terms and finally gaelic. So fair play to him.

If you want a history book that has the potential to alter the way you think about a period of history which many of us feel pretty familiar with then this is it

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Jeroen

London, United Kingdom

3/20/14

Overall

Performance

Story

"Great book but very poor delivery by narrator"

What made the experience of listening to Empires and Barbarians the most enjoyable?

Acquiring a better understanding of the turbulent times in first mIllenium.

Who was your favorite character and why?

n/a

Who might you have cast as narrator instead of Sean Schemmel?

This book should be recast by another narrator. Can't wait to listen to it again,

Any additional comments?

I am surprised that Audible and the author allowed mr Sean Schemmel to read this book. His computersised voice totally spoilt the book for me

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Neil

THURSO, United Kingdom

11/28/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"Lots of information"

Did Sean Schemmel do a good job differentiating each of the characters? How?

Not a character book

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No

Any additional comments?

Sean's let his other wise good read of a solid text down by his weird way he pronounced some of the place names. It was not just accent as I have asked Americans about it as well.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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